Saturday, February 26, 2011

Update: As of the morning of Feb. 23rd, at least five more infant dolphins have been found dead, including four dead baby dolphins on Horn Island in the Mississippi Gulf of Mexico and another on Ono Island off Orange Beach, Ala.. At least 28 baby dolphins have now been found dead since the beginning of the year. Experts say this is 10 times the average number of fatalities found in the area this time of year. Studies are underway to identify the cause and to determine if these deaths are linked to the oil disaster.

In the Gulf, the temperature is rising. The magical spring season should soon bring warm waters teeming with life back to the region’s marshy bayous and sandy shores.
But there are troubling signs all is not right with the Gulf. This week, dramatic video and stories are emerging of at least 18 dead baby dolphins found on the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi. The tragic sight of these baby mammals floating belly up not far from the high rises and condos that students and families will flock to this spring suggest a different reality from the one presented by multi-million dollar ad campaigns that all is well along the Gulf shores.
Local fish and wildlife experts are studying the exact cause of this carnage to see if it's oil related. My NRDC colleague Josh Mogerman’s blog points out that scientific research shows how sensitive dolphins are to chemicals and toxins that can contaminate mother dolphins’ milk.

Dolphins at play near oil contaminated marshes of Bay Jimmy, LA, last fall. Photo by NRDC/Rocky Kistner

But this isn’t the only troubling sign that life isn’t normal down in the Gulf. Oily tar balls are still washing in and residents point out the beaches are definitely not normal. Lorrie Williams of Ocean Springs, MS, has been documenting the continued contamination of her nearby beaches.
“This was one of the first areas of Mississippi that was impacted by the BP oil last June,” she says. "BP never went down the beach to cleanup where the bayou and marsh grass is. The oil is stuck in the marsh grass. Everything is dead. When the sun hits on it, you get rainbow spots.”

Beach near Ocean Springs, MS, taken in February, 2011 Photos by Lorrie Williams

Meanwhile, independent scientists continue to explore the sea bottom for signs of oil. And they are finding it. A lot of it. Marine biologist Samantha Joye told BBC News that the true extent of the oil disaster is still a long ways off.

The impact on the benthos was devastating. Filter-feeding organisms, invertebrate worms, corals, sea fans - all of those were substantially impacted - and by impacted, I mean essentially killed....Another critical point is that detrital feeders like sea cucumbers, brittle stars that wander around the bottom, I didn't see a living (sea cucumber) around on any of the wellhead dives. They're typically everywhere, and we saw none.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor - and in the water column - was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars - starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

Local residents continue to complain that BP and local government officials are painting a rosy picture of the Gulf. That just doesn’t match the reality many coastal residents say they are experiencing. People know that a six-fold increase in the normal number of baby dolphins washing ashore this time of year means something isn't right.
In other words, the coast is far from clear.

When 11-year-old doberman pincher Turbo escaped from his home last Sunday night, he made some unexpected new friends.
Owner Cindy Burnett said her pooch had been missing for more than 15 hours when neighbors heard a loud splashing in a nearby canal. Upon investigating the scene, they found Turbo stranded in shallow water, surrounded by--yes--dolphins.
A very grateful Burnett said her pet was "shivering and in a lot of distress...if he had to tread water all night long, I know he wouldn't have been able to."
WATCH (via NBC 2 in Florida):

And then there were 30.
The 30th dead dolphin has been found on Alabama and Mississippi beaches, and already some officials are backing off their premature assertion that BP’s oil spill is not the cause. That’s 30 dead dolphins – two dozen of them babies – that have washed ashore on the Gulf Coast this year alone. According to the non-profit Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, there were 89 dolphin deaths reported in all of 2010. Further, research shows that in the first two months of 2009 there was one infant dolphin death reported and in the first two months of 2010 only two.
The alarmingly high death toll in the first two months of 2011 is profoundly troubling in itself, but since only a portion of the dead mammals will actually make it to shore, you have to wonder just how widespread the problem truly is.
We have had no luck confirming the identity of the “scientists” who initially told the Associated Press that BP was not to blame – I’m still betting NOAA is behind that knee-jerk denial. This story has the potential to re-engage the rest of the country, and BP and government public relations folks have to know that. I’m sure they’re scrambling the jets to control the damage as we speak.Veteran toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer, a member of my research team, says the dolphin deaths are an outcome that could very well be linked to BP’s spill. He explains: “Toluene and aromatic hydrocarbons are known to cause spontaneous abortions and severe birth defects in humans and other mammals.”
The real surprise here, from what I can gather, is that the spill effects may be hitting more quickly than anybody imagined, indicating that the oil and/or dispersant may be even more toxic than we thought.
Here’s a WKRG-TV News report on the latest baby dolphin deaths: http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/article/dead-baby-dolphin-washes-up-in-bon-secour-bay/1205027/Feb-23-2011_7-59-pm/

More dead dolphin babies found along Gulf Coast

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the number of dead dolphins found since Jan. 1 in the area affected by last year's oil spill is now 67, with 35 of them premature or newborn calves.

NOAA regional spokeswoman Kim Amendola says five dead calves were reported Friday in Mississippi or Alabama.
Scientists are looking into whether any unusual deaths in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill area may be related to toxins from oil or dispersants. However, they're also investigating whether it could be related to the cold weather or a disease.
Megan Broadway, spokeswoman for the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., says diseases are among known causes of so-called "abortion storms" in dolphins, when numerous females give birth prematurely.

Friday, February 25, 2011

(Reuters) - The death toll of dolphins found washed ashore along the U.S. Gulf Coast since last month climbed to nearly 60 on Thursday, as puzzled scientists clamored to determine what was killing the marine mammals.

By Leigh Coleman

Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:44pm EST

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - The death toll of dolphins found washed ashore along the U.S. Gulf Coast since last month climbed to nearly 60 on Thursday, as puzzled scientists clamored to determine what was killing the marine mammals.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the alarming cluster of recent dolphin deaths "an unusual mortality event," agency spokeswoman Blair Mase told Reuters."Because of this declaration, many resources are expected to be allocated to investigating this phenomenon," she said.Although none of the carcasses bore outward signs of oil contamination, all were being examined as possible casualties of petrochemicals that fouled the Gulf of Mexico after a BP drilling platform exploded in April 2010, rupturing a wellhead on the sea floor, officials said.Eleven workers were killed in the blast, and an estimated 5 million barrels (205.8 million gallons) of crude oil spilled into the Gulf over more than three months.As of Thursday, the remains of 59 dolphins, roughly half of them newly born or stillborn calves, have been discovered since January 15, on islands, in marshes and on beaches along 200 miles of coastline from Louisiana east across Mississippi to Gulf Shores, Alabama, officials said.That tally is about 12 times the number normally found washed up dead along those states during this time of the year, which is calving season for some 2,000 to 5,000 dolphins in the region."We are on high alert here," said Moby Solangi, director of the private Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi. "When we see something strange like this happen to a large group of dolphins, which are at the top of the food chain, it tells us the rest of the food chain is affected."At least 29 of the specimens recovered in recent weeks have been positively identified as bottlenose dolphins.Solangi said that scientists from his organization have performed full necropsies, the animal equivalent of autopsies, on about a third of the roughly two dozen dead calves."The majority of the calves were too decomposed to conduct a full necropsy, but tissue samples were collected for analysis," he said.The latest wave follows an earlier tally of 89 dead dolphins -- virtually all of them adults -- reported to have washed ashore in 2010 after the Gulf oil spill.Results from an examination of those remains, conducted as part of the government's oil spill damage assessment, have not been released, though scientists concluded those dolphins "died from something environmental during the last year," Mase said."The number of baby dolphins washing ashore now is new and something we are very concerned about," she added.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Fourth baby dolphin found dead on Horn Island (Updated 11:10 a.m.)

By KAREN NELSON - klnelson@sunherald.com

HORN ISLAND -- The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies has confirmed that a fourth baby dolphin has washed ashore on Horn Island,
The island, one of the longest in the chain that comprises the Gulf Islands National Seashore Park, is about 12 miles south of Ocean Springs.
Three baby dolphins were pinpointed Monday and a fourth was reported today by National Resource Advisory employees who are working with BP cleanup crews on the island.

SUN HERALD - AMANDA McCOY/SUN HERALD Dr. Connie Chevis, DVM, left, and Dr. Joey Kaletsch, DVM, take samples while performing a necropsy on a dolphin calf at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport on Monday, February 21 2011. The calf, who is believed to be about four days old, was killed by trauma. Mobi Salangi, executive director for the institute, says there is an unusually high number of dolphin calf deaths for this time of year. They have recovered 17 calves and are performing necropsies to determine the causes of death.

Researchers with the IMMS are headed to the island now to take tissue samples and possibly remove the bodies back for studies.
These infant dolphins are among the 18 reported since January.
The four are also among the 28 total adult and infant dolphins reported since the beginning of the year. None of the dead adults were pregnant females.
The industry’s leading scientist on marine mammal strandings is concerned about these deaths.
Blair Mase, NOAA’s marine mammal stranding coordinator for the Southeast region, confirmed that the number of baby dolphin deaths is high.
She said the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies reports all its findings to her.
So far this calving season, 18 infant dolphins have either been stillborn or died shortly after birth.
“We’re definitely keeping a close eye on this situation,” Mase said. “We’re comparing this to previous years, trying to find out what’s going on here.”
She said this is the time of the year that she sees death in young dolphins, because it is the beginning of the birthing season. But really, the normal birthing season is a little later in the year, she said.
“We’re trying to determine if we do in fact have still births,” she said. There are more in Mississippi than in Alabama and Louisiana.
“With the oil spill, it is difficult,” she said. “We’re trying to determine what’s causing this. It could be infectious related. Or it could be non-infection.
“We run the gamut of causes,” she said, including human impact, which would include the oil spill; infectious disease and bio-toxins,
IMMS has been conducting necropsies on the baby dolphins and sharing the findings with Mase.
Read more about this story later today at sunherald.com. Reporter Karen Nelson and photo journalist Amanda McCoy are on Horn Island today and will be reporting exclusively on what’s happening on the island.

5 more dead dolphins

Scientists have now found a total of 19 dead baby dolphins along the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast.

The latest discover was four dead baby dolphins on Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The Sun Herald reports another was found on Ono Island off Orange Beach, Ala.

Scientists are scurrying to find a cause. Researchers took tissue samples from the dolphins.

Institute for Marine Mammal Studies director Dr. Moby Solangi says the cause could be anything, including the cold weather or a change in food habits. Scientists have not ruled out possible
effects from the BP oil spill.

Scientists said so far, four calves in January and 15 in February have been found dead along Mississippi and Alabama shores.

Monday, February 21, 2011

GULFPORT -- Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.
The Sun Herald has learned that 17 young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines.
The Institute of Marine Mammal Studies performed necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of the babies today.

AMANDA McCOY/SUN HERALD Dr. Connie Chevis, DVM, left, and Dr. Joey Kaletsch, DVM, take samples while performing a necropsy on a dolphin calf at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport on Monday, February 21 2011. The calf, who is believed to be about four days old, was killed by trauma. Mobi Salangi, executive director for the institute, says there is an unusually high number of dolphin calf deaths for this time of year. They have recovered 17 calves and are performing necropsies to determine the causes of death.

Moby Solangi, director of the institute, called the high number of deaths an anomaly and told the Sun Herald that it is significant, especially in light of the BP oil spill throughout the spring and summer last year when millions of barrels of crude oil containing toxins and carcinogens spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil worked its way into the Mississippi and Chandeleur sounds and other bays and shallow waters where dolphins breed and give birth.
This is the first birthing season for dolphins since the spill.
Dolphins breed in the spring and carry their young for 11 to 12 months, Solangi said.
Typically in January and February, there are one or two babies per month found in Mississippi and Alabama, then the birthing season goes into full swing in March and April.
“For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet.”
Deaths in the adult dolphin population rose in the year of the oil spill from a norm of about 30 to 89, Solangi said.
Solangi is gathering tissue and organs for a thorough forensic study of the infant deaths and is cautious about drawing conclusions until the data is in, probably within a couple of weeks.
“We shouldn’t really jump to any conclusions until we get some results,” Solangi said. “But this is more than just a coincidence.”
The institute told the Sun Herald that it has collected 14 infant dolphins in the last two weeks and three in Mississippi today.
The institute has done a number of the autopsies, but no trend has emerged yet.
“Of the two calves on the table today, one appears to have had trauma,” Solangi said. “It was a very small calf.”
But he said that trauma to the body often occurs after a baby has died because the mother or other dolphins try to get the baby to breathe.
“I don’t believe the calf died because something hit it,” Solangi said.
“Some of the trauma you see in a baby dolphin death is the result of the mother or other animals around it trying to get it back. They don’t realize it’s dead until sometime later,” he said.
Read more about the infant dolphin deaths in Tuesday’s Sun Herald.

Scientist Finds Gulf Bottom Still Oily, Dead

Seth Borenstein

AP

WASHINGTON -- Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

Samantha Joye, UGA / AP

Marine scientist Samantha Joye claims in a report that oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and isn't degrading as hoped. Here, one of her photos, taken on Dec. 1, shows a dead crab with oil residue near it on a still-damaged sea floor about 10 miles north of the BP oil rig accident.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times.

Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor - and in the water column - was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars - starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

"This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers.

Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil.

"The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University.

Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 - something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right.

Getting answers about the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. Florida representative Doug Broxson took a trip to Dublin, Ohio to find out what really goes on at that branch of the GCCF. The unannounced visit was not welcomed by folks at the facility or Kenneth Feinberg.

Debbie Williams

DUBLIN, Ohio - "Mr. Feinberg, this is not a stunt. This is an effort to be transparent."
Florida state lawmaker Doug Broxson arrived in Dublin, Ohio unannounced he says, to unravel a mystery.

"What happens to a person's claim once they submit it? Where does it go? How is it processed and how is it that one claim of the exact same nature can be rejected and another claim is accepted?"

His arrival caused quite a stir and an angry phone call from Kenneth Feinberg.

"When you get no answers, you get no straight answers," Broxson told Feinberg on the phone, "hundreds of people denied for no reason, you use desperate means and that is what I'm doing."

Broxson did make it inside the building. He says there are 800 people on phones but the decisions of who gets paid and how much are not made here.

"Mr. Feinberg invited me to Washington where he says he and four other people made the decision of 500 thousand claims."

"If that is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, that is preposterous." Orange Beach mayor Tony Kennon was suppose to make the trip with Broxson but city business forced him to stay at city hall. But he fully supports Broxson's efforts.

"Mr. Feinberg thinks we are out to embarrass him and you know what, he's right. If I can embarrass him and show that he's not doing the job that he's being paid to do then I'm going to do that in any way I can."

Broxson says he feels more like an investigator than an elected official. "We're trying to bring the system to something that works." And he'll go wherever the case takes him to get the answers he says the gulf coast deserves.

Representative Broxson will have another shot at Feinberg Friday when the claims czar is scheduled to be in Tallahassee to meet with lawmakers and the Florida attorney general.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Fri, 2011-02-11 13:22 | by Waterkeeper Allianceby Scott Edwards, Director of Advocacy, Waterkeeper Alliance
(originally posted on Feb. 8, 2011 by The Huffington Post - http://tinyurl.com/4kb9gj9)
Who hasn't seen those "Making It Right" ads that BP is using to flood the media like so much run-away oil saturating the Gulf? Over the past nine months, BP has conducted a full-throttle charm offensive, taking out full-page ads in The New York Times , sponsoring small-town festivals all along the Gulf Coast, and running countless television spots, repeating their relentlessly conciliatory message. They're pulling out all the stops -- clearly subscribing to the notion that the amount of penance owed is directly proportionate to the size of the sin. And with the enormity of the transgression of public trust embodied in the spill, BP sure has a lot of "Making it Right" to do.
But BP's a company whose bottom line doesn't account for the cost of restoring our precious natural resources or the health of our communities. BP is in it for the money. The amount of "Making it Right" BP is going to do is purely a function of some number-crunching cost/benefit analysis. They spend money on ads because they're more interested in cleaning up their image than cleaning up the Gulf. A clean image means increased profits; a clean Gulf means financial losses in the form of remediation and wildlife rehabilitation costs and Clean Water Act fines.
So while they're working hard, with a whole lot of fanfare, in street festivals and in TV commercials to make it right, they're quietly working even harder behind closed doors in Washington to make it all wrong. In DC, they're undercutting the American public and our Gulf Coast communities, ensuring that at the bottom line of the ledger, they protect their shareholder profits.
This shouldn't be news. From day one, BP has tirelessly downplayed the number of barrels of oil that gushed into the Gulf waterways during their 87-day disaster. Remember when they claimed only a 1,000 barrels a day, and then, when pressed, 5,000? That whole time, their internal documents that were turned over to Congress had BP admitting that in truth, 100,000 barrels a day could have been pouring from their blown well.
Even today, in the midst of their "Making it Right" push, BP still struggles mightily to re-shape the truth. We hear now rumors that BP is lobbying hard in private meeting rooms at the Environmental Protection Agency to once again minimize their impacts and stick a make-believe low number on the amount of barrels that poured forth per day from their disastrously faulty oil rig. It seems as if BP has the EPA over a barrel -- the word is that EPA is actually negotiating with agency to officially reduce the number of barrels spilled in order to reduce the company's fines under the Clean Water Act. By not living up to the true size of this disaster, BP is doing anything BUT making it right.
Correctly assessing the number of barrels released per day during those three months matters. It directly impacts the Clean Water Act fines that BP must pay. Since this money is to be used to help restore the millions of devastated lives, miles of coastline, and communities that were impacted by BP's negligence, the impacts of BP's attempt to rewrite history goes way beyond the immediate financial impacts to the company. As the Exxon Valdez spill has shown us, the environmental and human health impacts of the Gulf disaster will continue for decades to come. Without an accurate accounting of how much oil was really dumped into the Gulf by BP's irresponsible actions, researchers will be at a significant disadvantage. There's no reason, other than pure profit, for BP to lie about the amount of oil it released.
In an article published Thursday, the Houston Chronicle quoted Representative Ed Markey; "If BP wants to start increasing dividends to their shareholders, they should stop low-balling the size of the spill and own up to their responsibilities to the people of the Gulf of Mexico." The article also discusses BP's new strategy of decreasing its overall footprint while refocusing on exploration in developing nations. Hardly "making it right," the focus on developing nations is another way to squeeze profits while skimping on environmental and safety precautions. Developing nations have fewer environmental protections than industrialized ones and often have little infrastructure to guarantee protections against damages to communities from oil and gas businesses' negligence and malfeasance. With less governmental transparency it's easier for corporations like BP to get away with doing more harm.
Surely, we can all recognize that "making it right" is nothing more than a transparent public relations slogan; we shouldn't expect more from a multinational that's in the business of making money. But, if its true that EPA is in fact considering officially reducing the scope of BP's oil spill, than we should question this slogan: "to protect human health and the environment." That's the EPA's mission as defined by act of Congress, and it's a phrase that has to mean something. The EPA's job is protect America's waters and people - not to protect a polluter corporation or to soften the blow of accountability against a bad actor, mandated by the federal laws the EPA was created to uphold.
The industry-wide problems that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster must be fixed. We can't stand by and watch BP shy away from taking total responsibility from fixing its own mess nor can we stand by and watch the company move into less protected and less organized areas to wreck havoc on their environment, health and way of life. "Making it right" means being honest about how much oil was spilled into the Gulf, paying the fines owed under the Clean Water Act - in their full and correct amounts. It means providing Gulf Coast communities impacted by this disaster with whatever it takes to restore their lives and their livelihoods. And if BP won't make it right, it's up to the EPA and Obama Administration to compel them to do it.

As of February 1st, 2011, it is estimated that between 800,000 and 4 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants have been sprayed or poured into the Gulf of Mexico in an on-going operation.The broad-scale distribution of these poisonous substances has been justified by statements such as “trade-offs have to be made”.

The “tradeoffs” have been made and, because toxic dispersants were used, we now have millions of gallons of oil laced with toxic dispersants still suspended throughout the water column and on the sea floor, shifting constantly with the currents.This is causing severe, long-term harm to the public’s health, marine life, the environment, the economy and the Gulf’s way of life.

The EPA authorized the use of toxic chemical dispersants to sink the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil accident violating the Clean Water Act, and the EPA (specifically Lisa Jackson, Dana Tulis, and Sam Coleman) with the help of NOAA, (specifically Jane Lubchenco, Ed Levine, and Charlie Henry) have blocked the efforts of the Coast Guard and the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama to protect their natural resources and the health, safety and welfare of their citizens as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

On January 16, 2011, I wrote a letter to President Obama (copy attached) requesting answers to a number of specific questions and serious concerns brought to my attention by my constituents.It’s been over three weeks since that letter arrived at the White House and, at this point, it appears that I will not get a response from the President or his administration.

Consequently, my constituents and I have decided to start a petition (viewable at www.agcrowe.com) which will be directed to you and launched within the next few days.Our goal is simple.We need your help to stop this destructive activity immediately and begin implementing proven, safe, non-toxic solutions which are already available and ready to be deployed.

Sincerely,

A.G. CROWE

District 1

State Senator

State of Louisiana

Attachments:Letter to President Barack Obama

Preview of Petition

Senator A.G. Crowe “Clean the Gulf” Petition

Please join Louisiana State Senator A.G. Crowe in demanding that proven, non-toxic solutions are immediately implemented to restore the Gulf of Mexico to its condition prior to BP’s oil rig blow out disaster.

TO:

SENATOR HARRY REID, Senate Majority Leader

CONGRESSMAN JOHN BOEHNER, Speaker of the House of Representatives

CONGRESSMAN FRED UPTON, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee CONGRESSMAN DARRELL ISSA, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform SENATOR JAMES INHOFE, Ranking Member, Committee on Environment and Public Works CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN, Chairman of the Committee on the Budget CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA, Chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure CONGRESSMAN BOB GIBBS, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment

FROM:

CONCERNED U.S. CITIZENS

PETITION

PREAMBLE

As of February 1st, 2011, it is estimated that between 800,000 and 4 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants have been sprayed or poured into the Gulf of Mexico in an on-going operation. The broad-scale distribution of these poisonous substances has been justified by statements such as “trade-offs have to be made.”
The “tradeoffs” have been made and, because toxic dispersants were used, we now have millions of gallons of oil laced with toxic dispersants still suspended throughout the water column and on the sea floor, shifting constantly with the currents. This is causing severe, long-term harm to the public’s health, marine life, the environment, the economy and the Gulf’s way of life.

Therefore, we respectfully submit the following petition:

Whereas, the U.S. Presidential oath of office calls for the preservation of the nation’s natural resources, and that responsibility is delegated to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA);

Whereas, the EPA (specifically Lisa Jackson, Dana Tulis, and Sam Coleman) with the help of NOAA, (specifically Jane Lubchenco, Ed Levine, and Charlie Henry) have blocked the efforts of the Coast Guard and the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to protect their natural resources and the health, safety and welfare of their citizens as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution;

Whereas, the EPA authorized the use of toxic chemical dispersants to sink the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil accident violating the Clean Water Act;

Whereas, those chemical dispersants, and particularly all versions of the product called Coexist, have been proven, by scientific studies, to have made the BP Horizon accidental discharge worse than if the oil had been allowed to float to the surface, where it could have been collected;

Whereas, per scientific studies, the toxic chemical dispersants have polluted large and indefinable areas of the Gulf waters, making them unpredictable and unsafe for all living organisms;

Whereas, per scientific studies, the toxic chemical dispersants have contaminated much of our Gulf’s seafood, endangered the public’s health, shaken the public’s confidence in the quality of our seafood, and prolonged the recovery of the seafood and tourism industries;

Whereas, the public’s health has been put at great risk, as can be seen by the alarming rise in health problems which can be directly linked to exposure to the toxic chemical dispersants and dispersed oil;

Whereas, per scientific studies, Coexist is a biocide which kills the natural microorganisms that break down oil, retarding the degradation of the oil itself, and is, thus, a continuing threat to all life in the Gulf;

Whereas, there are on-going reports of the illegal continued spraying of Coexist on the Gulf’s waters and its shorelines;

Whereas, toxic chemical dispersants are destroying the Gulf’s economy and its way of life;

Whereas, there are EPA-known, non-toxic, bioremediation solutions which could have been used in the first few weeks of the BP Horizon accidental discharge which would have prevented the majority of the damage to the marine life, the environment, and the public’s health which resulted from the oil well blow out;

Whereas, these same non-toxic bioremediation solutions can still be used to thoroughly and quickly clean up the oil and the toxic chemical dispersant, and reverse the damage to the Gulf;

Whereas, the implementation of bioremediation technology is a fraction of the cost of other cleanup methods currently being used and would save the U.S. government untold wasted funds;

Whereas, there are non-toxic, first-response, bioremediation products that are already on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Contingency Plan (NCP) list of approved products for use in cleaning up oil spills;

Whereas, the EPA has provided no valid scientific reason for withholding permits for the full and immediate implementation of thoroughly vetted and demonstrably workable, non-toxic, bioremediation remedies designed to fully detoxify and remediate both the oil and the toxic dispersant within two to four weeks;

Whereas, non-toxic bioremediation methods create clean, healthy waters which would allow the restoration of jobs in the fishing, tourism and oil/gas industries, as well as all other related commerce,

We, the people, do hereby formally request that:

Our federal oversight trustees acknowledge and adhere to the formal demands of the Gulf Coast States (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Florida) requesting that proven, first-response, EPA-certified, NCP-classified, non-toxic, bioremediation products be immediately implemented to clean up the contamination from the oil and toxic dispersants present in our gulf waters, tidal zones and marshes, so that our natural resources can be returned to pre blow-out conditions, and

That the use of toxic chemical dispersants, such as Coexist or any other scientifically-identified, toxic dispersant, be banned immediately in U.S. navigable waters.

AL city weighs studying beach for oil spill damage

Orange Beach officials are considering whether to fund a study by two researchers investigating whether its beaches are clean following last year's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Auburn University professors Joel Hayworth and Prabhakar Clement have requested roughly $100,000 to support their work. The Mobile-Press Register reported Sunday that the pair of scientists hope to release some of their findings before the anniversary of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The blast killed 11 people and triggered a large offshore oil spill that sent contaminants onto Orange Beach's coastline.

BP PLC, which leased the drilling rig, earlier this year wrapped up a local cleanup that focused on scrubbing tar beneath the surface of the sand.

"We know that BP has done a lot of work to clean the beaches, but what does that mean with respect to clean? It depends on how you define clean," Hayworth said. "There's a real need to be able to state that in some defensible scientific way as quickly as possible."

Hayworth said the study would examine how the spill affected the beach's ecosystem, whether it physically changed the beach and how long it takes a beach to recover. The city council did not immediately vote on the proposal.

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon has pushed BP to clean the city's beaches in time for spring break. As the anniversary of the oil spill gets closer, Kennon said he wants his city to be able to say it has a clean bill of health for its air, water and soil.

Local officials have tried to investigate the possible environmental damage. Kennon has dispatched crews to the sand with augers to probe for anything beneath the surface. For months, the city has also collected air, water and sediment samples for testing.

Councilwoman Pattisue Carranza said the findings would be useful to residents.

"What we want is the individual perspective, not the tourists' perspective, not the science perspective, but what's it going to do to children and grandchildren in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years?" Carranza said. "What's it going to do to people my age in 30 years?"

Friday, February 11, 2011

I took a walk along the beach Feb. 09, 2011. I had seen the many ads placed on your TV and news outlets all over the world paid for by BP proclaiming“The oil is gone and our beaches are clean”. The one that really gets me is how safe the seafood can be when this is what our beaches look like.

I have visited the locations seen here many times during the BP crisis and seen it in various conditions. This last trip was as bad as it was in July during the height of the disaster at sea. The real disaster has just begun I am afraid.

It is my sincere belief that this is only the beginning of years of BP dispersed oil episodes on our beaches and in the food we eat.

It isn't hard to walk along the beach and see that things are not well. Despite constant cleaning, the beaches are still covered with dispersed oil balls 10 months later.

The same people who claim the beaches are clean are the same people who claim your seafood is safe!

Renee Blanchard

Save Our Gulf Campaign Coordinator

Renee comes to the role of Save Our Gulf Coordinator from her second stint at Greenpeace. At Greenpeace International, Renee served as a Green Electronics Campaigner residing in both Amsterdam and Oakland, CA. At Greenpeace International, Renee coordinated the quarterly released Green Electronics Scorecards, co-authored the third edition of the Green Products Survey, and kept the pressure on the electronics leaders to create a more sustainable industry through other campaign tactics. In her first stint at Greenpeace, Renee campaigned on the Green My Apple and Kleercut campaigns while serving as the Campaign Associate.

Renee also coordinated the Childproofing Our Communities Campaign for the Center of Health, Environment, and Justice, where she led statewide environmental health initiatives in Florida and Maryland, coordinated the national Green Flags School Program, and coordinated the National Safe School Siting Working Group. The National Safe School Siting Working Group is comprised of local, state, regional, and national groups working to make sure no child goes to school on or near a contaminated area.

Renee was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, but spent a lot of time in Florida, Washington DC, the Thai/Burma border, exploring Europe by rail, and cycling through sunny Oakland, CA, all while developing her passion to eliminate toxic chemicals from our bodies, our communities, and our planet.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Big blob of gunk found in the Gulf

Scientists used a multi-corer to take sediment samples near Perdido Pass, offshore of the Alabama and Florida border. Lab tests found no traces of oil. The goo is made entirely of dead plankton, algae and bacteria.

From a distance the toxic goo looks like oil, but up close it smells like rotten eggs and wiggles like jelly. Scientists have no idea what it is or how it wound up in the northern Gulf of Mexico, near Perdido Pass.

Just off the Florida Panhandle coastline, within site of Perdido Key, scientists have discovered an underwater mass of dead sea life that appears to be growing as microscopic algae and bacteria get trapped and die.

Early samples indicate the glob is at least three feet thick and spans two-thirds of a mile parallel to the coast.

No one knows where it came from or where it will go.

Scientists are trying to determine if oil from last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster led to the glob. But tests so far have found no sign of oil.

"It seems to be a combination of algae and bacteria," said David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer with the University of South Florida, describing the substance as "extraordinarily sticky" and toxic.

While scientists have drawn no conclusions about the gooey mat's origin, they are not ruling out a potential connection to the oil spill. Oil gummed and slicked that part of the Gulf for 30 to 40 days during the three-month well gusher, which pumped 186 million to 227 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

"We don't know all the ramifications, the implications of a spill like this," Hollander said.

He and other scientists plan to return to the glob in a few weeks for more samples. The equipment available on the last cruise was not long enough to reach the bottom of the mat. The bottom sediments could hold important clues about how the glob formed. The scientists also did not have the time or equipment to map out the entire blob.

Researchers found the substance while on a December search for oily sediments on the Gulf floor. Scientists found such sediments, but were diverted when they got a tip about something unusual about a half mile from Perdido Pass.

The environment near the blob is a relatively pristine sloping shelf, where wave action usually sweeps away sediments.

Tests show it had no connection to land, was less than a year old and almost 100 percent biological. Tests also showed that tiny organisms had been getting stuck to the blob and dying as a result.

George Crozier, executive director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Louisiana, said such material is foreign to the northern Gulf coast environment.

"It sounds a lot like an organic deposit, the source of which is frankly very difficult to ascertain," Crozier said.

He speculates that a bloom of algae may have feasted on something - possibly oil - ran out of food and then died. The decaying algae might have then sucked all the oxygen out of the water and killed whatever was in the way.

The blob is equally puzzling to local ecologists who study the coastal resources near Perdido Pass. But it could be one of many strange discoveries that scientists find as they conduct oil spill research. Gulf research has been limited over the decades, so every odd discovery may not have a link to the spill.

"The scrutiny and the eyes and the awareness and the attention on the water these days, people are noticing things they've never noticed before," said Phillip West, coastal resources manager for the city of Orange Beach, Alabama.

But all of the damage caused by the oil and the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants used to break it up will be difficult to trace, especially as time passes.

In his nine years with Orange Beach, West said he has never heard of a substance matching Hollander's description. Occasional mats of decayed marsh muck turn up, but those are far different.

West also is not ruling out a potential link to the oil.

"Ecology tells us there are chains of events that occur for inputs or disturbances in the environment. One thing can lead to another," West said.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Activist, Mother, and Voice of the Gulf People, Kindra Arnesen sat down with the Project Gulf Impact team, Matt Smith, Heather Rally, and Gavin Garrison recently to reveal shocking new information about the BP oil disaster and why the whole world should be paying attention to the Gulf. A must watch for anyone wanting new information on the Gulf of Mexico, she reveals shocking new information sure to send waves through the country.

Who is BP Slick

John L. Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper, located in Tuscaloosa County Alabama. I am the enforcement and advocacy branch of the Friends of Hurricane Creek.
Photographer / videographer, I have dedicated my life to exposing the truth about pollution and lack of accountability by the industries and agencies who use our waterways as waste conduits.